Harry Reid: I feel sorry for John Boehner

Harry Reid feels bad for John Boehner — and he isn’t shy about expressing his feelings.

In Reid’s view, the speaker has a restive Republican Conference full of “crazies” holding him tightly to a requirement that a majority of Republicans support everything that comes to the floor, which is “bad for the country.” Each of his bills are often, by necessity, a “love note to the tea party,” Reid says, and the Democratic leader wonders whether Boehner “or anyone else in the Republican leadership in the House really [knows] what they’re doing.”

Reid isn’t criticizing Boehner personally, aides insist. He’s instead making the case that Boehner is a nice guy who just isn’t in charge of things. And they don’t believe Democrats are risking any negotiating capital either.

Reid’s not alone with his crocodile tears for Boehner. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said the speaker “wants to do the right thing” by working with moderates.

“I think he’s worried the right-wing, extreme base of his party is going to take him out,” McCaskill said.

Still, Boehner wouldn’t remain speaker very long if he slapped anything and everything passed by the Senate on to the House floor for a vote. And Reid hasn’t jumped at putting bills on the floor passed by House Republicans in recent years that might pass the Senate, albeit with a minority of Democratic votes, like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

A House GOP leadership aide called Reid’s strategy of public carpet bombing “incredibly stupid and childish.”

“Boehner’s standing in his conference is, if anything, enhanced by criticism from prominent Democrats that his members don’t like or respect very much,” the aide said. “It’s noise and if anything diminishes the Senate majority leader.”

At the heart of Reid’s razzing is the Hastert rule, the GOP custom which dictates that a majority of Republicans support anything that comes to the House floor. Boehner has broken the rule in the past but says he won’t on the Senate-passed immigration bill.

In opening up the Senate on Monday after a one-week break, Reid talked about his July Fourth holiday and how he enjoyed meeting with his constituents back home in Nevada. And then he segued directly into a diatribe against Boehner’s adherence to the Hastert rule, which contributed to the House farm bill’s downfall on the floor.

“I hope the speaker has learned his lesson from recent high-profile failures of the shortsighted Hastert rule,” Reid said. “There is no shame in passing bills moderates from both parties can support.”